Labour wins Assembly election

But real socialist alternative to cuts is needed

Welsh Labour has won the Welsh Assembly elections, although it has been unable to secure an overall majority, winning just 30 of the 60 seats in the Senedd. The unpopularity of the Liberals has been reflected with a swing against them of 4%, possibly not as severe as they had expected. They partly succeeded in presenting Welsh Liberals as very different to the Clegg Liberals in Westminster. But in many constituencies the Lib Dems came behind the racist BNP who also lost half their vote and the defection of many Lib Dem voters to Labour in Cardiff puts the Liberal control of Cardiff Council in jeopardy for next year. Arguably the biggest losers are Plaid Cymru who lost 3% of the vote and 4 seats.

Labour will not try and form a government on its own, but it is unlikely it will be able to have a working majority on its own. It will probably try and muddle through each issue. A coalition with the Liberals or even Plaid Cymru remains a possibility in the long run. The reality is there is very little to choose between the policies of the three parties on all the key issues of public services.

Clearly, as in the English council elections, working class voters voted Labour as the best way to oppose the ConDem government in Westminster and to punish the Liberals for their perceived betrayal. This was played on by Welsh Labour. Peter Hain, Labour Shadow Secretary for Wales and MP for Neath, said during the election “What I’m finding on the doorstep is a lot of concern about the actions of the Tory-led UK Government. Whenever someone tells me they’re not sure that they’ll vote, I start talking about student tuition fees, the need to defend the health service and the public spending cuts. It’s like a political lightning conductor”. But this is a cynical line by New Labour who introduced tuition fees and trebled them, are cutting the health service in Wales by £1 billion and would implement enormous public spending cuts if in power in Westminster.

The next government will attempt to blame the effects of deep cutbacks on the Westminster government, but health cuts will be a big issue in Wales over the next five years. The outgoing coalition led by Welsh Labour agreed to cut spending on health by 7.6% despite the NHS struggling to keep up with the intense demands in Wales. Labour will try and pin the blame on the ConDem government, but working class people in Wales will not let the Labour administration off the hook as it refuses to fight the cuts, but passively passes them onto patients and health workers.

The lacklustre nature of the Assembly campaign was reflected in the turnout of just 42%. The Assembly election failed to capture the interest of working people across Wales. Those who did vote were polarised. In middle class areas the Tory vote strengthened, as the Lib Dems have carried the blame for the cutbacks, while working class voters have returned towards Labour in reaction to the Tory cuts in Westminster.

However the Labour vote is quite weak. Labour won 42% in the constituencies but just 37% in the regional lists. A substantial socialist alternative to the cuts could have won a lot of those votes. In Scotland, where Labour’s leadership is seen as especially weak, Labour did very badly compared to the strong-looking SNP.

Socialist Party Wales stood as part of the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) on two regional seats in South Wales Central and South Wales West. TUSC laboured under the big disadvantage of a low profile at this stage without the resources to reach its potential supporters and with no media coverage. TUSC gained 1639 votes 0.5% of the vote in the two regions it stood in.

With the Socialist Labour Party and Communist Party also standing in the lists the left vote was split three ways. In South Wales Central, for example, the combined left vote was 4.1% of the vote and a united campaign would have overtaken UKIP.

Nevertheless the canvassing and street campaigning that was done by TUSC got an excellent response from working people in Wales. In Cardiff Central, Swansea West, Pontypridd and Cynon Valley a lot of posters went up in windows indicating the support that we received on the doorstep.

Plaid Cymru has been thrown into crisis by its worst result in an Assembly election. The fault lines between its southern regions, which rely on working class support, and its northern regions which base itself more on small business and farming interests are being exposed. Leader Ieuan Wyn Jones from Ynys Mon is coming under intense criticism for refusing to rule out a deal with the Tories during the election campaign which undermined Plaid in the south Wales valleys.

The racist BNP suffered a serious setback in these elections losing nearly half their votes from 2007 despite an aggressive campaign targeting the Welsh assembly election with BNP leader Griffin making several visits to Wales. Nevertheless the issues that provide the breeding grounds for their racist ideas still remain and the support they have gained needs to be undermined by a real alternative to the different diets of cuts offered by the main parties.

From the Socialist Party Wales website.

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